Afzul Khân was sitting in Shunker Dâs's house at Faizapore with a
frown upon his face. He had come all the way in order to consult
Mahomed Lateef, the old Syyed, about a certain blue envelope which was
hidden away in his _posteen_, only to find that the old man had
retreated before his enemies to his last foothold of land, while the
usurer had enlarged his borders at the expense of the ruined old
chief's ruined house.
Now Mahomed Lateef was Afzul Khân's patron. In this way. The latter
was foster-brother to that dead son who had died gloriously in the
regiment, and who had been born at an outpost on the frontier. Indeed,
but for the old man, Afzul would never have put the yoke of service
round his neck. So his frown was not only on account of his useless
journey; much of it was anger at his old friend's misfortunes, and
those who had taken advantage of them. It angered him to see a blue
monkey painted on the wall in front of which the staunch Mohammedan
used to say his prayers; it angered him still more to see the rows of
cooking-pots where there used to be but one. Yet business was
business, and Shunker might be able to tell him what had become of the
Commissariat-Colonel _sahib's_ daughter; for Afzul had had the address
of the letter spelt out for him by a self-satisfied little schoolboy
at Kohât, and knew enough of poor Dick's family history to suppose
that Belle Stuart must be his cousin.
"Estuart _sahib's_ daughter," echoed Shunker, a sullen scowl settling
on his face; as it always did at the memory of his wrongs. "Why she
married that _shaitan_ Raby who lives at Saudaghur now, because he was
turned out of the service. _Wah!_ a fine pair, and a fine tale. She
had a lover, Marsden of a Sikh regiment, who paid for her with lakhs
on lakhs. Then, when he was killed, she took the money and married
Raby. Scum! and they talk about our women, bah!"
This was not all malice and uncharitableness on the usurer's part; for
it must be remembered that, if we know very little of Indian social
life, the natives know still less of ours; the result being, on both
sides, the explanation of strange phenomena by our own familiar
experience; and this is not, as a rule, a safe guide in conditions of
which we know nothing.
Afzul gave a guttural snort, startling but expressive. "She married
Raby! Truly it is said 'The journeyings of fools are best not made.'
And Marsden _sahib_--long life to him!--was her lover! _Inshallah!_
she might have found a worse."
"Before the worms got him," chuckled Shunker; "and then his money was
worth another fine man. That is woman's way, white or black."
"Raby _sahib's mem_," repeated Afzul meditatively. "There thou
speakest truth, O Shunker. He is with her now." The memory of those
two, standing together hand in hand, came to him and he nodded his
head approvingly, for the thought that Belle's allegiance might return
to its original object commended itself to his mind; his view of the
subject not being occidental.
"Who is with her now?" asked Shunker with a stare.
"Marsden _sahib_. Hast not heard he hath come back to life?"
The usurer's eyes almost started from his head. "Come back!" he
shrieked. "He is not dead! Oh holy Lukshmi! what offerings to thy
shrine! Why, the _shaitan_ will lose the money; he will have to give
up the business; and I--oh Gunesh-_ji!_ I am revenged, I am revenged!"
He lay back on his bed gasping, gurgling, choking with spiteful
laughter and real passionate delight.
The Pathan scowled. His knowledge of English law was limited, and he
objected to laughter at Marsden _sahib's_ expense. "If he gave it to
the _mem_ for what he got, as thou sayest, Shunker, Marsden _sahib_
will never ask it back. He will take the woman instead; that is but
fair."
"Thou dost not understand their crooked ways," gasped Shunker; "and
'tis waste of time to explain. So Marsden _sahib_ is alive again; that
is news indeed! _Hurri Gunga!_ I must go down to Saudaghur and
felicitate the _shaitan_ on his friend's return. He! he! on his
friend's return!"
Afzul felt the longing of the frontiersman to stick a knife in a fat
Hindu stomach, but he refrained. The blue envelope was going to be a
heavier responsibility than he had thought for, and till that was
settled he must not wander into by-ways. No matter how the pig-faced
idolater had lied in other things, it was true, about the _mem_ and
the Major, he had seen that with his own eyes. Had Dick _sahib_ been
her lover too? And what did both those brave ones see in such a poor,
thin creature? Truly the ways of the _sahib-logue_ were past finding
out. Nevertheless he would seek out the old Khân, and see what he
said. Shunker might be lying, all except that about the _mem-sahib_
and the Major; that was true.
It was well on to noon when Afzul, after many hours of varied
travelling by train, by canal, and finally on foot, found himself in
Mahomed Lateef's last few acres of land. Of a surety they were not
ones to be voluntarily chosen as a resting-place; bare of everything
save the sparse stalks of last year's millet crop, showing all too
clearly how scanty that crop had been; bare to the very walls of the
half-ruined tower which stood supported on one side by the mud hovel
occupied by the owner. A significant fact, that bareness, showing the
lack of flocks and herds, the lack of everything that was not wanted
for immediate use. And as he stood at the open door of the yard, it
also showed clean-swept and garnished, dire sign of the poverty which
allows nothing to go to waste. Yet it was not empty of all, for as the
Pathan knocked again, a child, bubbling over with laughter, ran from a
dark door into the sunlight.
"Nâna, Nâna! [grand-dad] catch, catch!" it cried, and its little legs,
unsteady though they were, kept their advantage on the long ones
behind, long but old; crippled too with rheumatism and want of food to
keep the stern old heart in fighting order; yet bubbling over with
laughter, also, was the stern old face. "Catch thee, gazelle of the
desert! fleetest son of Byramghor! Who could catch thee? Ah, God and
his Prophet! thou hast not hurt thyself, little heart of my heart!
What, no tears? Fâtma, Fâtma! the boy hath fallen and on my life he
hath not shed a tear. _Ai_, the bold heart! _ai_, the brave man!"
An old woman, bent almost double with age, crept from the door. She
kissed the child's feet as it sat throned in its grandfather's arms.
Her lips could reach no higher, but that was high enough for worship.
"He never cries! None of them cried, and he is like them all,"
she crooned. "Dost have a mind, Khân _sahib_, of Futteh Mahomed
falling?--the first, and I so frightened. There was a scratch a finger
long on his knee and--"
"Peace, Fâtma, and go back! There is a stranger at the door. Go back,
I say!"
It was a difficult task to draw the veil over those bent shoulders,
but the old woman's wrinkled hands did their best as she scurried away
obediently.
"_Salaam Alaikoom!_" said the Pathan. "The mother may return. It is I,
Afzul, brother of the breast."
"Afzul!" The old martinet's face grew dark. "The only Afzul I knew was
a runaway and a deserter. Art thou he?"
"Ay! Khân _sahib_," replied the man calmly. "I ran away because I had
sold my life to Marsden _sahib_, and I wanted to buy it back again. I
have done it, and I am free."
"Marsden _sahib!_ 'Tis long since I heard that name. Allah be with the
brave! Pity there was none to stand between him and death as on that
day when my son died."
"Thou liest, Khân _sahib_. I stood in my brother's place. Marsden
_sahib_ is not dead. I left him three days ago at Saudaghur."
"Not dead? This is a tale! A prisoner no doubt. _Inshallah!_ my blood
scents something worth words. Here, Fâtma, take the child; or, stay,
it's best he should hear too. Such things sink through the skin and
strengthen the heart. And bring food, woman, what thou hast, and no
excuses. A brave man stomachs all save insult."
So, with the child on his knee, the old soldier listened to Afzul
Khân's story, while in the dark room beyond the women positively shed
tears of shame over the poor appearance which the plain _bajra_,[6]
cakes, unsweetened, unbuttered, presented on the big brass platter.
"There is the boy's curdled milk," suggested his sad-faced mother. "He
will not mind for a day."
"Peace, unnatural!" scolded the grandmother. "The boy's milk,
forsooth! What next? Women nowadays have no heart. A strange man, and
the boy's milk forsooth!"
Haiyât _bibi_ blushed under her brown skin. Hers was a hard life with
her husband far over the black water, and this stern old man and woman
for gaolers. But the boy was hers; she hugged that knowledge to her
heart and it comforted her.
The evening drew in, the child dozed off to sleep, but not one jot or
tittle of adventure was to be passed over in silence. "_Inshallah!_
but thou didst well!" "God send the traitors to hell!" "Ay! Marsden
_sahib_ was ever the bravest of the brave!" These and many another
exclamation testified to the old campaigner's keen interest. But when
Afzul began tentatively to question him about the blue envelope, the
light died from the hollow eyes. Raby _sahib?_ Nay, he knew nought,
save that the people said it was the _mem-sahib's_ money he was
spending in this new talk of indigo and what not. He wished them no
ill, but Murghub Ahmad, far away in the Andamans, had saved the _mem_
from insult,--perhaps worse--and she had given evidence against him in
the trial. He wished no man ill, but if what the people said was true,
and Raby _sahib's_ new dam would prevent the river from doing its
duty, then it would be a different matter. Ay! the new factory was but
ten miles up the river, but no one lived there as yet.
Now the matter of the blue envelope became more and more oppressive to
Afzul Khân the more he thought of it. Easy enough to send it
anonymously to Raby _sahib's mem_, and so be quit of it once for all;
but what if she had taken the Major's money, as Shunker asserted, in
order to buy a new husband? And what if this paper of Eshmitt
_sahib's_ meant more loot? Afzul was, all unconsciously, jealous of
this white-faced _mem_, and but for a strange sort of loyalty to the
boy he had betrayed would have liked to put the letter in the fire,
shake himself loose of all ties, and return to his people.
"Nay! thou askest more than I have to give," replied Mahomed Lateef to
his questioning. "I know 'tis on paper they leave their moneys, for,
as I said, the Colonel _sahib_ once asked me--'twas in China, during
the war--to set my name as witness to something."
"Was it long-shaped, in a blue cover?" asked Afzul, eagerly.
"There was no cover, but it was long, like the summons from the
courts. Stay! if thy mind be really set on such knowledge there is a
friend of my poor Murghub's--one who pleads in the courts--even now
resting in his father's village but a space from here. He must know
more than thou canst want to hear."
So in the cool of the next morning Afzul walked through the barren
fields to see the pleader. A keen-faced sallow young man, seemingly
glad to escape for the time from patent-leather boots and such like
products of civilisation. The Pathan found him squatting over against
a _hookah_ and basking in the sunshine like the veriest villager. For
all that he was fulfilled with strange knowledge of law and order as
administered by the alien, and Afzul sat open-eyed while he discoursed
of legacies, and settlements, of the _feme covert_ and the Married
Women's Property Act, with a side glance at divorces and permanent
alimony--strange topics to be gravely discussed at the gateway of an
Indian village through which men were carried to their rest and women
to their bridal beds, with scant appeal to anything but custom. It
utterly confused Afzul, though it sent him away convinced that the
blue envelope must mean the loot of another lover to the _mem-sahib_.
"I will wait," he said to himself decisively; "yes, I will wait until
she is faithful and goes back to the Major; then, as that pleader
fellow says, he will get the money. But if _he_ leaves her and takes
his money instead, then I will send her the envelope. That is but
fair. God and his Prophet! but their ways are confusing. 'Tis better
to steal and fight as we do; it makes the women faithful."
That evening he spent half an hour with a needle and thread, borrowed
from old Fâtma, in sewing the blue envelope safely into his skin-coat.
Then he sat once more stirring the old Mohammedan's blood with tales
of fight and adventure till far on into the night. Yet the earliest
blink of dawn found him creeping away from the still sleeping
household, and his right arm bare of a massive gold bracelet he had
worn for years. That he had left lying on the baby's pillow; for was
not the child the son of his brother? Had not his father saved Marsden
_sahib_ also? Ah! that score was not paid off yet. He still seemed to
see the tall figure standing in the sunlight. Fool that he had been
not to fire, instead of giving himself away at a mere word! Even now,
though he knew that but for him Philip Marsden's bones would have been
churning in a dreary dance of death at the bottom of some boiling pool
in the Terwân torrent, he felt the bitterness of defeat. His very
admiration, growing as it did with the other's display of pluck, added
to his resentment. To take an order from a man when you had your
finger on the trigger of your rifle! It was all very well to save a
wounded comrade, to stand by him through thick and thin, but that did
not show him, or convince yourself, that you cared as little for his
menace as he had done for yours. Some day, yes, some day! he would
stand up before Marsden _sahib_ and defy him. Then he could cry quits,
and go home to his own people in peace.
Nevertheless, the news of his master's accident which met him on his
return to Saudaghur sent him without an instant's pause to the factory
where Philip still lay unconscious. And when he walked, at the dead of
night, into the big bare room where Belle sat watching, his face
softened at the sight of that dark head on the pillow. It softened
still more when something of the past--Heaven knows what--seemed to
come with him, rousing a low, quick voice from the bed. "Afzul, it is
cold; put on more fuel. Do you not feel the cold? Afzul, Afzul!" For
that something had carried Philip Marsden back to the smoky cave among
the snows, although the windows stood wide open to let in the tardy
coolness of the summer night.
The Pathan drew himself together and stood at attention. "_Huzoor!_"
he answered quietly. "It is done; the fire blazes."
Belle in the half-shadows thrown by the sheltered lamp stood up
looking kindly at the new-comer. "I'm glad you have come, Afzul," she
whispered; "he has been calling for you so often."
Behind his military salute the man smiled approvingly. She was of the
right sort, faithful to the old love. Marsden _sahib_ should marry her
and get the money, if that was the way they managed things over the
black water. And this solution of the question grew upon him as he
watched her unfailing devotion when, between them, they helped the
sick man through the dreary trouble which was all too familiar to the
Pathan. "It was so in the cave," he would say, as time dragged on
through days when the sick man lay still and silent, through nights
when the quick hurried words never seemed to leave his lips and it was
all they could do to keep on the bandages.
"It's the bullet in the shoulder blade that's troublin' him," said the
clever little Irish doctor, who rode forty miles every day between two
trains in order to see his patient and keep an eye on his hospital.
"Put three more days' strength into him, Mrs. Raby, and I'll bring
over another man and we'll have at it somehow. The wound has niver
haled, and niver will till it gets a fair chance."
Shortly after this Belle found herself pacing up and down the
verandah, scarcely daring to think of what was going on within. Would
he die? Was this really the end? Was it to be peace at last, and no
more struggle? And lo and behold! when the doctors let her into the
room again he was lying with a smile on his face, because the pain,
the ceaseless pain which had annihilated everything else in the world,
was gone.
"I've given you a lot of trouble," he said; and even as he spoke fell
asleep from sheer, blessed ease.
After that again came a time when even Afzul stood aside and let the
_mem_ take the lead while he sat watching her curiously--a time when
it positively seemed more to her that Philip should take so many
spoonfuls of nourishment every hour than that he should get better;
when the content of immediate success blotted out the thought of
future failure, and the fear of death was forgotten in the desire of
staving it off. Most people who have nursed a case in which even the
doctors stay their hands and wait on Nature, know that strange
dream-like life wherein the peaks and passes on the temperature chart
seem by contraries to raise or depress the whole world. Belle fought
the fight bravely; and not until she stood one day looking at a
thermometer which registered normal did she feel a sinking at her
heart. They had come down into the low levels of life; they were back
in the work-day world. Yet it was not the one they had left six weeks
before. Even outwardly it had changed. The last green blade of grass
had withered to a brown shadow on the sunbaked soil, and the
dust-storms of May swept over the half-finished house.
"It looks dreary enough now, but just you wait till next year," said
John Raby, in his cheerful confident way. "The new dam will be
finished, I hope, the water will come in at high level to the garden,
the place will be a paradise of flowers, and we shall be dividing
thirty per cent, profit! There's a prospect! Oh, by the way, did I
ever tell you that beast Shunker Dâs came down just after you did,
Marsden, expecting to find me on my back like a turned turtle? His
face, when he saw I was jolly as a sand-boy, was a caution! By George!
that man does hate me and no mistake."
Belle moved a step nearer her husband and laid her hand on the back of
his easy-chair. Perhaps it was only his good-nature in leaving her
free to nurse Philip, but somehow she felt they had drifted far apart
during the past six weeks. "I seem to have heard nothing," she began,
wistfully.
"Better employed on the head of the firm, my dear," he replied with a
laugh. "You do her credit, Marsden. And now I must be off again, for
there is some idiotic fuss at a village a few miles off. Shunker's
work, I expect; but we are too strong for him. Even the native
recognises the almighty dollar, and if they will only have patience,
I'll engage to treble the revenue of this district. Well, good-bye,
Belle. I'll be back to-morrow or next day. Soon as I can 'get,' as the
Americans say. Take care of yourselves."
When he had gone the punkah went on swinging, Belle's hands knitted
busily, Philip's lay idle in the languor of convalescence; all was as
before, and yet there was a difference--a difference of which each was
conscious, and which brought a certain restraint.
"Why does Shunker hate him?" asked Major Marsden.
There was no lack of confidence now between these two, and if he asked
many questions, she was quite ready to answer them faithfully,
according to her lights. In this one, however, she failed to give a
just impression, for the simple reason that she herself had no
conception of the extent of the usurer's malice. In fact, his impotent
rage on discovering that Philip's return had apparently made no
difference to the Rabys would have been incredible to an educated
Englishwoman, had she been aware of it, which she was not. The man,
coming down to Saudaghur expectant of consternation, had found nothing
but a stir of fresh enterprise which his keen business eye told him
meant money. He wandered about from village to village, noting the
golden seed being sown by his adversary, until the thought of the
harvest in which he would have no share positively worried him into
spleen and ague. And as he lay among the simple village folk a fresh
idea for revenge came to console him. It is never hard to change the
stolid opposition of the Indian peasant into stolid obstruction. No
overt injustice is required; nothing but a disregard of custom. And so
Shunker, taking advantage of the short period during which he had been
associated in partnership with John Raby, began cautiously to call in
debts in the name of the firm. Now in an Indian village a debt to the
ancestral usurer is a debt; that is to say no nighty ephemeral
liability which may crop up at any time claiming payment, but a good,
solid inheritance going back sometimes a generation or two; a patent
almost of solvency, a claim certainly for consideration at the hands
of your banker; since a bumper crop might any day give you the
upper-hand, or a bad one make it still more unwise for the creditor to
present his bill. Thus, when Shunker disregarded time-worn prejudices
to the extent of asking one Peru, an old-established customer, to make
a settlement, the latter looked as if the foundations of the round
world had been moved.
"Pay," he said slowly, his broad nostrils inflated like those of a
horse shying at novelty, "I am always paying, _buniak-ji_, year by
year, one harvest or another. God knows how much, but 'tis the old
way, and old ways are good."
"They are good," sighed the usurer, piously. "I like them myself,
Peru; but new masters have new ways."
"New masters do not make new land," retorted the peasant shrewdly
enough. "That remains the same. It must be sown; yet when I ask the
seed-grain, as my fathers have done, the answer is '_Pay!_' Pay! of
course I will pay when the crops ripen. Does not harvest mean payment
to the peasant?"
"Your crops won't ripen long on those fields, I'm afraid, my poor
Peru! The _sahib_ wants land, here, everywhere, for this new factory
of his. The men who will not pay will see what befalls. A little will
go this year, a little more next. If I were alone 'twould be a
different matter, for I was ever faithful to my friends."
Shunker's air of virtuous distress was admirable, but Peru laughed;
the rough peasant laugh full of broad toleration. "As vermin to the
Pathan, so are the grain-dealers to the farmer! We warm you, and you
feed on us till you grow troublesome, then--off goes the coat! One
_buniah_ is like another; why then dost change?"
"I change not, dunderhead!" cried Shunker enraged at a certain slow
superiority in the other. "'Tis Raby _sahib_ claims payment."
"Then tell Raby _sahib_ I will pay when the river comes. It will come
this year perhaps, if not, next year; if luck be bad, it may tarry
twain, not longer. It comes ever sooner or later; then, let us talk of
payment."
Shunker leaned forward, his evil face kindling with malice. "But what,
Peru, if the river never returns? What if Raby _sahib's_ new dam is
built to prevent the water coming, so that he may have a grip on the
land? What if the seed-grain thou sowest springs green, to die yellow,
year after year?"
Pera Ditta's ox-eyes opened helplessly. What if the river never
returned? The idea was too vast for him, and yet it remained with him
long after Shunker had gone to sow the same seed of mischief in other
minds. He did it deftly, taking care not to turn the screw too tightly
at first, lest he should bring down on himself the villagers' final
argument of the stick. The reason given by the Laird of Inverawe for
hanging the Laird of Inverie, "that he just didna like him," has been
given before now as fair cause for doing an unfortunate usurer to
death with quarterstaves. So Shunker did not disturb primeval calm too
rudely. Nevertheless as he paused for a night ere returning to
Faizapore, in the empty house at Saudaghur, where Kirpo had passed the
months of Râmu's captivity, he felt content with his labours. He had
started a stone of unpopularity on its travels, which by and by would
bring down an avalanche on his enemy.
As he lounged on the string bed, set for coolness on the flat roof, he
told himself, not without a measure of truth, that sooner or later all
his enemies perished. Ah, if it were only as easy to keep those you
loved in life, as it was to drive those you hated down to death! But
it was not; and the thought of frail, sickly Nuttu came, as it often
did, to take the savour even from revenge. The memory of deserted
Kirpo's sons,--those strapping youngsters whom he had often seen
playing on that very roof--made him groan and roll over on his fat
stomach to consider the possibility of marrying yet another wife. He
had married so many only to find disappointment! As his face came
back, disheartened, to the unsympathetic stars which fought against
him, he started as if he had been shot. For there was Kirpo herself
tall and menacing standing beside the bed. The veil wrapped tightly
round her body, left her disfigured death's-head face visible.
"Don't be more of a coward than need be," she said scornfully, as the
Lâlâ, after shooting up like a Jack-in-the-box, began to sidle away
from her, his dangling legs swinging wildly in his efforts to move his
fat form. "I've not come to beat the breath from thy carcase. 'Twill
die soon enough, never fear; and just now there is a son to perform
the obsequies. There won't be one by and by."
The indifference of her voice, and the aptness of her words to his own
thoughts, roused the Lâlâ's rage. "What dost want, hag of a noseless
one?" he shrieked, "she-devil! base-born!--"
"Not bad words, Lâlâ," she interrupted calmly. "I've had enough of
them. I want money. I'm starving; thou knowest it. What else could I
be?"
"Starving!" The word rolled sweeter than any honey under Shunker's
tongue. "Then starve away. So thou thoughtest to trick me--me! How
didst like the bangles, Kirpo dear? the brave bangles,--he,--he!"
To his surprise the allusion failed to touch her. Instead of breaking
into abuse she looked at him curiously, drew her veil so as to hide
all but her great dark eyes, and squatted down, as if for a chat, on
the ground opposite to him.
"Look here, Lâlâ!" she said. "This is no matter for ill words: 'tis
business. What is past, is past. I'm going to give thee a chance for
the future--a last chance! Dost hear? So I've come to say I am
starving. For six months I paid for my food in this very place; paid
for it in thy pleasure. Fair and square so far. But now, because of
that pleasure, Râmu is in jail again and I am noseless. Then Râmu's
people have taken his sons,--_hai! hai!_ his beautiful sons--from me
because of that pleasure. Is not that payment enough, Lâlâ? Shall I
starve also?"
"Why not?" chuckled Shunker, "I have no need of thee any more."
Kirpo leaned forward with hand raised in warning, her fierce eyes on
his face. "Have a care, Lâlâ! Have a care! It is the last chance. Thou
dost not want me; good. I asked for naught to be taken; I asked for
something to be given."
"Not a _paisa_, not a _pai!_" broke in the usurer brutally. "I'm glad
of thy starvation; I'm glad they've taken away thy sons."
"Stop, Lâlâ!" shrieked Kirpo, her calm gone, her voice ringing with
passion. "I did not say _my_ sons! I said Râmu's! Look, Shunker, look!
I have another,--" as she spoke, she tore her veil aside--"in my arms,
Lâlâ! Is he not fair and strong for a two months' babe? Would you not
like to have him? No, no, hands off, no touching! He is mine, I say,
mine, mine!" She sprang to her feet holding the baby high above his
head exultantly. He sat staring at it, and trembled like a leaf.
"Kirpo!" he gasped, "give it to me; by all the Gods in Heaven, I will
pay--"
A peal of mocking laughter greeted the words. "Bah! Now I have roused
thee. 'Tis all a lie, Shunker, all a lie! Only a trick of starving
Kirpo's! And yet, somehow he favours thee as thou mightest have been
before the grease came to spoil beauty. For all that not like Nuttu,
the sickly one. Nuttu will die, this one will live. Wilt thou not,
heart's darling and delight?" She covered the babe with a storm of
passionate kisses.
"Kirpo! by all the torments of hell--" urged Shunker.
"What! art there already? Not so fast, Lâlâ! not so fast. Wait till I
bring this babe to curse thy pyre, to spit on thy ashes,--thy son--thy
son!"
"It is a lie!" burst in the wretched man, beside himself with doubt,
certainty, and desire. "He is not mine."
"Well said, Shunker, well said!" laughed Kirpo triumphantly, growing
calmer with her evident success. "He is not thine, he is mine." She
folded her veil round the sleeping child with a flourish, as if to
emphasise her words, and stepped backwards. As she stood there sombre,
malignant, the winged thoughts flew through Shunker's brain. There is,
strictly speaking, no possible divorce, no remarriage for the Hindu;
but if Râmu could be got out of the way, he, Shunker Dâs, might pose
as a social reformer. It was a fine idea. Or he might,--a thousand
suggestions found expression in the covetous hands he stretched
towards his victim. "Kirpo, listen!"
"I will not listen. I gave the chance for the child's sake. Now--"
"Kirpo! take what thou likest--"
"I _will_ take what I like, Lâlâ. That is revenge!" Before he could
say another word she had turned her back on him, and ere he could rise
to stop her was down the narrow stair and out into the street with her
precious burden.
So Lâlâ Shunker Dâs lay down and cried, because not one of the women
his wealth had bought could bear him a son save this Kirpo whom he had
betrayed. Fool that he was not to have seen she must have some deep
move on hand ere she came to beg of him! Revenge! He had dreamt of
that himself; but what was his poor spite to this devilish malice? He
tried to remember that want was a hard master; that Kirpo's own people
came from beyond the fourth[7] river and were therefore useless to her
as a refuge; that it was woman's way to bark more than bite. In his
heart of hearts he knew that she had said truly when she offered him
his last chance. And, as a matter of fact, while he sat trying to
recover confidence on the edge of his bed, Kirpo and the baby, with
many a swing of the full skirts as she strode along, were making their
way direct to the enemy's camp; in other words to John Raby's new
factory. The _sahib_ had interfered on her behalf once, and he hated
Shunker. He could give her coolie's work on the new dam, and in return
she could give him valuable information as to the usurer's little
game. The Lâlâ, had had his chance, partly for the sake of comfort,
partly for the sake of the child. Now she would devote herself to
revenge and gain a living at the same time.
Of all this, however, Belle was profoundly ignorant; nor did Kirpo say
more to her new master than was necessary to show a sound, conceivable
reason for her professions of attachment to his cause. John Raby
laughed when he heard of his enemy's vows of vengeance; but he was
wise enough to see the prospect of unpopularity with his poorer
neighbours, and the advisability of being prepared for opposition.
"I hope you don't mind, Marsden," he said a day or two before the
Major left, "but I've been treating with that truculent rascal of
yours, Afzul. He's coming back to India, he says, next cold weather,
on business or something. I've asked him to bring me a gang of navvies
and do overseer himself till next rainy season. Those hill-men work
like Englishmen, and the new dam will require constant care until it
solidifies; besides, I believe in mercenaries; a bandit is always
handy."
"And Afzul consented?" asked Philip in surprise.
"Jumped at it. There is no one like the noble savage for turning an
honest penny when he can, and I own to tempting him pretty stiffly. We
may want that sort of fellow by and by to keep things going."
"I am surprised at Afzul for all that," continued Philip,
thoughtfully. "I wonder what he means?"
"Devotion to you," laughed the other; "you should have heard him. And
you too, Belle! He laid the butter on thick about your capabilities as
a nurse."
She looked up quickly. "I suppose it's ungrateful, but I don't like
that man. He always seems to have something in his mind that I can't
get hold of."
"He is very intelligent," replied her husband with a shrug of his
shoulders; "and took quite an interest in the business, I assure you;
he asked a lot of questions. And, to tell the truth, I think a
thoroughly devoted rascal is the most useful thing in creation; so I
hope he is one."
Philip laughed. "Shall I leave my interests in his hands, Belle, or in
yours?"
"Leave them to me, my dear fellow," interrupted John. "Belle doesn't
understand business."